Non-oil private sector companies in the UAE reached an all-time high on their job hirings compared to the past three and a half years as the economy rebounded strongly and companies reported strong sales.
The IHS Markit UAE Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which gives an overview of operating conditions in the non-oil private sector economy, showed solid improvement with business activity rising at the fastest pace since July 2019.
David Owen, Economist at IHS Markit, said PMI data signaled another robust rise in business activity across the non-oil sector in August as demand continued to rebound from the pandemic.
He said that employment numbers picked up at the fastest rate for more than three-and-a-half years.
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Owen added that supplier performance picked up after six successive months of waiting for inputs.
The improvement was only slight with several companies still finding that global shipping issues led to a delay in import arrivals and increases in raw material prices.
The firms hope to gain investment from Expo 2020 and benefit from a general pickup in economic conditions.
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Owen said that the companies are looking at higher growth in the coming months, but with the COVID-19 situation the outlook for future activity slipped again and was the least optimistic since March.
In August the UAE PMI stood at 53 which was down from 54.0 in July. The new orders rose for the sixth straight month as the business activity accelerated to the quickest rate of expansion since July 2019.
As per the survey the domestic sales continued to grow whereas exports decreased for the fourth month in a row due to rising COVID-19 cases in some regions and difficulties with transporting goods due to shipping issues. (AW)
